Q: In the 80s and maybe still in the 90s, the easy way to start music
was to pick up a guitar and learn three chords, or pick up a Super 8
camera and make a film. But nowadays you would perhaps use something
like this [cell phone camera]. So has Super 8 now become more crafty or
more exclusive and is still the punk aesthetic?

Paolo Davanzo: That's a good question.

Lisa Marr: We try to keep it as the punk aesthetic. At the [Echo Park]
Film Center, we still try to make it accessible. But I agree with you,
there are other media that come along, that grab the public imagination
and then obviously, digital technology is the Super 8 of today. It is
something that everyone has, that your grandfather can use, your little
brother can use. But we do believe that there is something irreplaceable
about this [Super 8] technology. We don't want it to become a rarefied
art form, we want to keep it in the everyday which is why we teach our
students to use it, which is why we encourage our community to use it,
which is why we show it as much as possible to say that it's still a
vital art form.

Paolo: But I think it's also interesting because when people were
shooting first 8mm in the 40s and 50s and then, since 65, Super 8, it
was still more like family videos. And in the 80s it became once again
like an outsider art because people were shifting towards video. Now,
every kid can buy a little crappy cell phone that has a video camera on
and all of a sudden becomes a cultural producer, at least a content
producer, but it doesn't have that same kind of outsider aesthetic to
it.

Q: Would you say that Super 8 culture has gone full circle, that it
is now becoming one with the old amateur culture? The punks were
anti-establishment, and the typical punk filmmaker would be the
anti-family filmmaker, but now they are all one family?

Paolo: Exactly. That's hilarious, yes, well said.

Lisa: Yeah, it's complex, the way these media come and go in our
culture.

Q: I think a difference with today is that, back then in the 80s, you
didn't have a choice. Super 8 was the only way to make a film if you
didn't have money. Or making a fanzine and xeroxing it was the only way
to make a magazine. But nowadays, it's a very conscious choice of a
particular material because you have other alternatives. A blog is
cheaper than a fanzine, cell phone video is cheaper than Super 8.

Lisa: And there is this return to craft in all forms, things that are
made with your hands, things that are made with the community, and
people are hungry for that. It's like the church of our generation, it's
a way to gather people and celebrate something that everyone has a
common belief in. So, yes, I think that there is that conscious
community building aspect to it now that maybe didn't exist before.